to behold this light of the sun, to look on the land of Eta, on my aged father, on my friends, who hast raised me far beyond mine enemies when sunk below them. Courage; it is given thee both to touch these arrows, and to return them to the giver, and to make it thy boast that thou alone of mankind in guerdon of thy virtue hast handled them. For by kindness I myself acquired them: I am not then aggrieved that thou, my friend, shouldst both look at and hold them: for whoever knows how to return a kindness he has received, must be a friend above all price.

NE. Thou shouldst go within.

PH. Aye, and I will bring thee in too, for my disease longs to possess thee as my supporting aid.

CHO. I have heard in story, yet truly I never witnessed, how that the all-powerful son of Saturn seized * Ixion, once the invader of the couch of Jove, and thereupon chained him to a 'whirling wheel; but of no other do I know by hearsay, nor have I seen among mankind, doomed to a lot more hateful than this man's, who having injured no one by force or fraud, but among the just a just man, hath been ruined thus undeservedly. This wonder possesses me, how ever, how ever, he lonely listening to the breakers dashing

i Philoctetes had received the arrows in reward for his services to Hercules, and particularly the kindling of his funeral pile on Æta. * Ixion's story is too well known to need repetition.

The word vέ, which is supported by the authority of Eustathius, (vid. Brunck's note,) meant originally the fillet used by women to tie up their hair, vid. Hom. II. XXII. v. 469, and after that came from its round form to signify a wheel. Musgrave, however, suggests ἄντυγα.

around, how in truth he could have supported an existence so thoroughly pitiablem: where he alone was bordering on himself, unable to walk, nor was there any inhabitant of the place, "a neighbour in affliction, with whom he might bewail his fiercely-gnawing, gory cause of groans re-echoed: nor who might with gentle herbs assuage his most fevered blood bubbling from the wounds of his empoisoned foot, should he light on any so as to gather it from the fostering earth. For he crawls now here, now there, (sometimes, it may be, tottering about like an infant deserted of its own nurse,) from whence there is a facility of path, when the pang that preys upon his soul shall relax, not gathering the sowed nutriment of holy earth, nor of other food wherewith we industrious men support

This appears better suited to comedy than tragedy, and to company with the proximus sum egomet mihi, or the often quoted verse, "None but himself can be his parallel."

Kaxoyritav is not "a bad neighbour," but "a neighbour to evil," as Brunck has shewn in his note from analogy. Barby remarks on some acute observations by Lessing, who says that if the word could be taken in the first sense it would be a very beautiful and energetic eulogium on the joys of social life; in this sense indeed the idea has been expanded by Thomson:

"Such is the rooted love we bear mankind,

All ruffians as they were, I never heard

A sound so dismal as their parting oars."

AGAM, Act 3.

But Lessing gives two reasons for xaxoytíτwv not bearing the former meaning, since in that case oude would have been repeated immediately before it, and secondly, it would not accord with the "reechoed groans."

ourselves except if ever by the winged arrows of his bow striking from afar he might procure food for his hunger. Ah wretched soul! that for ten long years he was not gladdened with the beverage of the flowing wine-cup, but looking out, if any where he might descry such, for stagnant water, ever would he approach it. Now however he shall end his life in happiness, and rise to greatness from those miseries, having met with the son of brave heroes, who in bark that walks the main, in fulness of many months, brings him to his paternal abode of the Melian nymphs, and beside the banks of Spercheius, where the "brazen-shielded hero enters the assembly of all the Gods, all radiant in heavenly fire, above the mounds of Æta.

NE. Crawl out, an thou wilt. What can be the matter, that thus from no assignable reason thou art silent, and thus struck dumb art kept so?

Pí. Oh! alas! alas!

NE. What is it?

PH. No harm. But proceed, my son.

NE. Is it that thou feelest pain from thy existing ailment ?

PH. Not I indeed: no, I think I am just now lightened of it. O ye Gods!

NE. Why thus with groans dost thou invoke the Gods?

PH. That they may come as our deliverers, and placable. Oh! Oh!

This alludes to the apotheosis of Hercules.

There is a scene not unlike this in the Frogs of Aristophanes,

NE. What can be the matter with thee? wilt thou not tell, but continue thus silent? Thou art clearly involved in some affliction.

shall not be able Alas! it pierces,

PH. 'I am undone, my son, and to conceal my misery from you. pierces me through. Unhappy! wretched me! I am undone, my son, I am racked, my son. Oh! alas! alas alas! by the Gods, if thou hast ready by thee to thine hand any sword, my son, strike me on the top of my foot, mow it off as quickly as possible, spare not my life. Come, O my child!

where Bacchus and Xanthias contending which is the God, which the slave, and Æacus proving them by stripes, they invent some curious excuses for their cries.

"Philoctetes, feeling the symptoms of his distemper approaching, endeavours as much as possible to conceal his anguish, being apprehensive that his cries and groans might induce Neoptolemus, in spite of his promise, to leave him behind; he makes slight of it, therefore, till quite overpowered by continual torture, he acknowledges himself at last unable to stir. This circumstance, we may observe, is artfully thrown in by the poet, to stop the effect of Ulysses' stratagem, which was just on the point of execution, and which, if it succeeded, must of course have put an end to the drama; this accident intervening gives a new turn to the whole, serves to introduce the remorse and repentance of Neoptolemus, gives Ulysses an opportunity of appearing, and brings about the catastrophe." Thus far Franklin, who does not appear to have remarked the sublime moral contained in this part of the play, which shews us how often our estimate of good or evil fortune is utterly false, and is the more striking, since it at once baffles those very plans which Ulysses had endeavoured to recommend by the Jesuitical doctrine of doing evil that good might follow, and asserts the right of Providence to produce good from the evil it has permitted.

NE. But what is this fresh thing thus suddenly

risen, for which thou utterest so much of wailing and of groans for thyself?

NE. Grievous at least is the burden of thy distemper.

PH. Aye, grievous indeed, and unspeakable: but pity me.

NE. What then shall I do?

PH. Abandon me not out of fear, for it comes on me at intervals, when haply it hath been sated with roaming abroad. Alas!

NE. Miserable that thou art! Alas, too plainly miserable indeed from all manner of woes. Dost thou then wish I should hold and touch thee at all?

PH. Nay not this at least: but having taken these my weapons, even as just now thou askedst of me,

Unless all the commentators be mistaken, these expressions and the λƒÃƒÂƒÃλ of Eschylus are positive nonsense, and such as our barbarian Shakespeare, with all his false taste and treasons against the unities, would have thought unworthy of kings and heroes, and fit to rank only with the "Do-de-do-de-do-de" of poor Tom. Indeed it is not improbable that the comedian's satire was directed against them, since in his Clouds, v. 390, he uses a word nearly the same for a most ludicrous purpose.